It’s bushfire season again in Australia. A record-breaking heatwave and fierce winds have resulted in a tinderbox landscape and difficult-to-control fires across much of the southeast.
“Frankly,” Jason Heffernan, chief officer of Victoria’s Country Fire Authority, said on Tuesday, “the state is very, very dry. Any fire that breaks out will be a challenge for the community..”
The fires are the worst since 2019-2020, that black summer of ash horizons and foul air, when 19 million hectares of land were burned, 33 people died and 3 billion animals were affected.
Cricket, like everything else, was affected. Big Bash and school matches were canceled and a Sheffield Shield match played in heavy smoke was likened to “smoking 80 cigarettes” by New South Wales spinner Steve O’Keefe.
In the small communities of Sarsfield and Clifton Creek in rural Victoria, the 2019-2020 fires were devastating. Many had to start over from scratch. John Kinniburgh and his wife Carol were one of 80 families who lost their home in Sarsfield.
“We had a cedar house,” says Kinniburgh, “with terraces everywhere, and once it got going it just exploded. It was certainly a shock. There was a lot of destruction and drama. The community went through the emergency phase of survival, and then you start your recovery. I was involved with the Sarsfield recovery group and we thought about what we wanted to look like in five, ten years. The whole process was very positive, new people moving in, some people rebuilding, It all felt more connected.”
The idea to hold a cricket match to bring the two fire-damaged communities together came from the local fire brigade. Phil Schneider, a volunteer, rescued some tea tree wood from a peat field fire that had been burning for weeks and took it to a wood turner in Lake Tyers. Together they worked on it until the Sandhill Ashes urn was born – named after a hill between the two communities.
The first Ashes match took place in January 2021 and created a lot of excitement. The two sides received sponsored shirts and shorts, and both communities practiced hard. It also attracted the Australian Cricket Foundation, including Merv Hughes and Greg Matthews, who organized a clinic alongside the match.
Kinniburgh remembers the day fondly. “There were about 20 people per team – a few were really athletic, some could barely hit the ball, a few super catches were taken and most of the runs were hit through square leg. There was lots of laughter and a big crowd of spectators drinking and eating from the food trucks.” Sarsfield won by just one point.
The game also managed to reach some who had turned their backs on community programs after the fire. “Mainly men who stuck to themselves and did it hard,” says Kinniburgh. “But some of them got involved in cricket and the benefits were significant. One man told me he had had a fantastic time, and that the game had really made a difference to how he felt about himself.”
Although the subsequent events were smaller, the Ashes were fought twice more. Clifton Creek are the current owners, with the next battle scheduled for 2027. And through this inspiration, Sarsfield Cricket Club, which went bankrupt in 1999, was reborn. The club now plays at the Sarsfield Oval, where one of the local volunteers mows the grass. They currently sit second in the Bairnsdale C Grade competition, having won it last year, with a Sarsfield player, Craig O’Brien, named player of the season for his 339 runs and eight wickets.
For now, Sarsfield and Clifton Creek are again on alert. Victoria is sweltering, with temperatures reaching 48.9 degrees Celsius in Waleup on Tuesday, and Adelaide wilts after its hottest night on record. Kinniburgh watches and waits with Carol, Luna the cat and Millie the border collie in the new house, the nearest fire is currently 50 km away.
“I’m a little baffled as to why conservative people think climate change is a scam,” he says. “From here it seems so obvious. It’s not just fire, it’s the temperature, the number of days of heat, it’s floods, hot northerly winds, more extreme events. Anecdotally you feel it, but also statistically. It’s a bit to do with fossil fuels and the political agenda, but when you have these kinds of things people tend to have a culture of blame. Some people blame our volunteer fire brigade, some people blame the Greens who are pushing for this. restore native forests and protect possums.”
On a recent trip to Melbourne, the fire app on Kinniburgh’s phone pinged all night. When they returned, the garden was covered with burnt leaves and smoke hung on the horizon, the smell lingering. “I’ve watered areas where I’m allowed to splash, I’ve got water sprinklers on. We’ve rebuilt our house with less flammable materials, we’ve planted a lot of deciduous trees, but if a fire comes, we can’t stop it.”
It’s a phlegmatic attitude he even applies to previously priceless cricket memorabilia.
“When we lost the house I lost a lot of things that I hadn’t seen for ten years. In a bag on a cupboard I had a lot of cricket caps that I collected and cherished, but as such you don’t miss them, you have the memory of them.” The cricket trophies also went along, housed in a special shed that burned to the ground. He grins: “although the number of trophies I lost may have become too high over time.”
#Spider #Sandhill #Ashes #cricket #match #helped #rebuild #community #ravaged #bushfires